On charges of conspiracy, device fraud and aggravated identity theft, UK resident and owner of RaidForums Diogo Santos Coelho could be deported to the US.
The US government shut down the hacker forum RaidForums and confiscated its domains from cybercriminals, who used it primarily to buy and sell stolen databases as part of a Europol-led investigation involving US law enforcement. other countries.
Kenneth Polite, Jr., Assistant Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), argues that “eliminating this online marketplace for the resale of compromised or stolen data undermines one of the key ways that hackers profit from the widespread theft of sensitive financial and personal data.”
The Justice Department said several databases of stolen data contained more than 10 billion unique records from people that were for sale before the forum was seized.
As part of a global police operation known as Operation Tourniquet, which involved Europol, the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), the US Department of Justice.
Several countries have been working together on this investigation for at least a year, through the Joint Cybercrime Task Force, where authorities have exchanged evidence to help detectives identify the different roles played by market managers. , according to Europol, according to Europol.
In addition to the US indictment, the Portugal-based chief administrator and co-founder of RaidForums, Diogo Santos Coelho, was jailed in the UK in January. Coelho is accused of running the forum, which includes creating a membership system through which website users can pay to access chat rooms where they can share links, photos and other crime-related data.
The charges against him relate to his role as lead administrator of RaidForums and include collusion, access device fraud and identity theft.